7.17.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

‘It’s deeply disturbing.’ What a new report says about risks Google’s AI search features pose to kids

Hannah Grabenstein, PBS Newshour

Child safety advocates are sounding the alarm about artificial intelligence features now being used by millions of students in classrooms that rely on education tools made by Google. Google’s AI search functions pose an “unacceptable risk” to children, a new report from Common Sense Media found. The organization found that across more than 2,600 test interactions, Google’s two built-in AI search functions, AI Overview and AI Mode, routinely failed to recognize risky and harmful behavior, answered 100% of hypothetical homework assignments students should do themselves, and provided incorrect and inconsistent responses to questions. Both AI Overview and AI Mode are built into Google Search, and cannot be disabled.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/googles-ai-search-features-pose-unacceptable-risk-to-children-new-report-finds

AI Lays Bare the Authoritarianism of Modern Work. Time to Rethink Education.

Velislava Hillman, Peter G. Kirchschlaeger, Tech Policy Press

Noam Chomsky once observed that most people spend much of their lives in totalitarian systems. That system, he said, “is called having a job.” In most workplaces, individuals exercise little meaningful democratic control over the conditions governing their existence: salary, working hours, surveillance, behavior. People are normally free to leave, but generally only on the condition that they subordinate themselves elsewhere. The alternative is starvation. In practice, most people spend the greater part of their lives inside institutions they don’t control. Trade unions and labor protections have mitigated some of these conditions through long political struggle, but the underlying structure of top-down authority in the majority of workplaces has remained largely intact.

Anthropic unveils Claude for Teachers, joining OpenAI and Google in race to dominate classroom AI

Lily Altavena, Chalkbeat

Anthropic, one of the world’s most prominent artificial intelligence companies, is launching a version of its AI-powered assistant Claude for teachers, entering a race by technology companies to infuse AI into education. Anthropic boasts that its product can incorporate academic standards from all 50 states, and teachers can use it to help devise lesson plans, personalize instructional materials to students, and harness data to improve instruction, according to a company news release. Claude for Teachers joins Google, OpenAI, and Khan Academy — among others — in marketing AI products specifically to K-12 educators. The new product launched Tuesday and is available for free for verified educators in the U.S. It will also be piloted in Detroit Public Schools Community District for a study on educator well-being and practice.

Language, Culture, and Power

Trump social media post involving Minnesota children called ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ 

Elliot Hughes, Los Angeles Times

Somali and Muslim communities in Minnesota are once again condemning a social media post by President Trump, alleging it communicates “anti-Muslim bigotry” toward children. Trump posted a 14-second video clip showing children singing in graduation outfits, with girls also wearing hijabs. The children had sashes that read “kindergarten” on one side and “graduate” on the other. The video posted Monday appears to be from a Somali TV Minnesota news clip filming a ceremony at a charter school in St. Paul. Included in Trump’s TruthSocial post is a screenshot of a caption from an X account that first posted the video in June. The caption said, “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

Who Gets to Be an American? [Audio]

Lizzy Ghedi-Ehrlich, Lisa M. Hernandez, and Anna Law, Scholars Strategy Network’s No Jargon

Birthright citizenship has been part of the U.S. Constitution for more than 150 years, but why has it become the focus of such intense political debate in recent years? Professor Anna Law breaks down the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara, explains what birthright citizenship actually means, and traces the long history of who gets to be an American. Drawing from her new book, she separates fact from fiction on immigration, citizenship, and the Constitution, and explains why understanding that history matters today. For more on this topic: Check out Law’s new book, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship Read her blog post, I Read Trump v Barbara So You Don’t Have To Read her Made by History essay in TIME Magazine, History Shows Why Birthright Citizenship is so Important.   

Innovation, data fixes fuel Native American graduation gains at federally funded schools

Savannah Peters, AP News

During his senior year of high school on the Puyallup Reservation, Gerald Dillon traded much of his academic coursework for career training. When he walked into the second grade classroom where he worked as a teaching assistant, students would rush from their seats for a fist bump or a hug. The 18-year-old, who once found classes boring and put in only enough effort to pass, found renewed purpose to come to school everyday. “It motivates me. I like making connections with the kids, I like helping them,” Dillon said. It began in his junior year when he enrolled in career training courses. Soon, Dillon said, his grades improved. He graduated in June from Chief Leschi Schools in Washington and is now considering going to college for a teaching degree.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Newsom signs into law permanent funding for Farm to School meals program

Vani Sanganeria, Ed Source

California’s Farm to School program, which connects schools with California farmers to expand access to fresh meals and local ingredients, has secured permanent funding under legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week. SB 172 codifies the program after state lawmakers included continued funding in the 2026-2027 budget. State officials said the program has invested $86 million in 327 projects since 2021, benefitting 49% of public school students, with about 80% of grant recipients being Title I schools. “California is leading the nation in supporting children’s health by serving nutritious, locally grown school meals and providing food education that equips students with lifelong healthy habits,” Newsom said in a press release. “Supporting California farmers, local communities, and the health of California’s children remains a top priority, which is why we have secured permanent funding for California’s nation-leading Farm to School Program.”

Young Climate Leaders Say Knowledge Beats Presence

News Ghana

Young African climate leaders trained in Accra last week say genuine influence in climate negotiations requires technical expertise, not just a seat in the room. The reflections follow the African Youth Negotiators Fellowship Cohort 5, a week long training the Green Africa Youth Organization ran from July 4 to July 8, bringing together participants from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and Senegal on climate diplomacy, negotiation processes, climate finance, climate science and the workings of the UNFCCC. For several participants, the week reframed what effective youth participation actually looks like. Sheila Anyango, who already sits on Kenya’s climate negotiation team, said the training clarified the gap between wanting to serve and being equipped to. “It is one thing to want to serve your country, but it is another to be equipped to serve your country,” she said, adding that negotiations demand fluency in scientific evidence, negotiating texts and the history behind existing agreements, not just conviction.

Careers in the Time of Climate Change: Reflection of Czech High School Students

Kateřina Hašková and Martin Vaculík, Australian Journal of Career Development

The perception of climate change and its effects is growing among career researchers and practitioners. The aim of this article is to explore the reflection of climate change in high school students’ career aspirations because young people are those who will most be affected by climate change in the future. Fourteen semi-structured interviews with Czech high school students were analyzed based on the constructivist grounded theory. We propose the notion of the future and the relevance of climate change as two main categories from which to create four niches to illustrate the reflections of climate change in students’ potential careers. The recommendations for practical application are suggested for the field of career guidance and environmental education. Specifically, the study advocates for a mindful reflection of climate change when providing career support to students.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

The nation’s largest school system is expanding special education for its youngest learners

Nadra Nittle, The 19th

Preschoolers with disabilities in New York City will gain access to an unprecedented set of programs and services thanks to a major expansion in special education announced Tuesday by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York City Public Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels. The nation’s largest school system is investing $67.5 million in special education as families across the country fear the needs of their children with disabilities will go unmet amid the federal Department of Education’s continued dismantling.

Advocates launch Minnesota campaign for universal free childcare 

Kyra Miles, MPR News

Rising labor and insurance costs drove Kayley Spencer’s decision to shut down her childcare center in Duluth last month. She knew something had to change. “I want to ensure that my center is one of the last to close their doors,” Spencer said. “We’ve been seeing centers around our state closing at a very concerning rate, and I know firsthand the challenges that providers are facing, and our families can’t afford to pay more.” Spencer thought the necessary change could be found in Childcare for All — a grassroots campaign to make childcare free or low cost for all children from birth to age 5 in Minnesota. The campaign calls on the Legislature to fund the effort, arguing that making childcare a public investment will not only significantly lower costs for families, it will also allow providers, like Spencer, to supply livable wages for their staff and equivalent benefits.

Crayons, Culture, and Child’s Play: How Preschool Teachers Contribute to Racial Socialization

Casey Stockstill and Courtney Thornton, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

Scholars have shown that young children understand race and interpret messages about race from families and schools. In the United States, many children spend their early years in preschool classrooms, where preschool teachers contribute to constructing racialized environments for children. How do preschool teachers communicate ideas about race and racism in the classroom? Using interview data from 27 preschool teachers, we found that teachers used various classroom practices that tended to avoid addressing racism. Teachers largely avoided explicit mentions of categories such as Black or Asian and discussions of racism. Instead, preschool teachers minimized race by portraying race as an individual, visual attribute, or as an optional source of cultural novelty. In cases where anti-Black racism occurred between students, teachers excused white students’ actions as innocent child’s play. We argue that these approaches divorce race from power and uphold color evasiveness within classrooms. We contribute to scholarship on racial socialization by showing how preschool teachers’ classroom practices may complement or contradict racial socialization in families.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

An Elite N.Y.C. Public School Admitted 777 Students. Only 3 Were Black.

New York Times

A disproportionately small number of Black and Hispanic students received admission offers to New York City’s elite public high schools for the upcoming academic year, continuing a pattern of racial and ethnic gaps that has existed for years despite promises by elected officials to address the divide. About 62 percent of the students in the city’s public schools are Black or Hispanic. But at its eight most prestigious high schools, about 10 percent of the students in the incoming freshman class are expected to be Black or Hispanic, roughly the same as last year. About 80 percent of the seats went to Asian and white students. At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often considered the most selective of the city’s specialized high schools, three of the 777 offers were made to Black students, and 21 were for Hispanic students, together representing a nearly one-third decline from the previous freshman class.

Federal appeals court ends a decades-old school desegregation order in Louisiana

AP News

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ended more than 60 years of federal oversight of a Louisiana school system that had been ordered to eradicate segregation. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a decades-old desegregation mandate for the Concordia Parish School Board, handing a victory to President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pushed to end the court-ordered plans. The school system has been a focal point in the administration’s attempt to end legal cases dating to the Civil Rights era. The U.S. Justice Department spent decades fighting for such cases but reversed course under Trump. Officials in his administration have framed the remaining segregation orders as federal intrusion into local school systems. Louisiana officials agree they’re no longer needed and describe them as relics of a time when Black students were once forbidden from attending some schools.

School spending equity since 1976

Sarah Reber, Beyond Deng, and Gabriela Goodman, Brookings

Inequality of educational outcomes by race and class is large and persistent, and the role that schools do or could play to reduce these gaps is complex and long debated. Schools in high-poverty or predominantly non-white communities often fail to serve their students well. Many point to American schools’ reliance on local property taxes as the culprit, arguing the school finance system ensures that “affluent areas end up with well-funded schools and low-income areas end up with poorly funded schools.” However, state governments now contribute about as much to school funding as school districts raise locally, and the federal government also contributes. Moreover, state and federal funding disproportionately benefits school districts serving low-income students, and decades of school finance reforms mean that schools’ spending is less tied to its property wealth than in the past.

Democracy and the Public Interest

This Private School Had Students Scrub Floors and Attack a Fellow Classmate. The State Still Funds It.

Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen, ProPublica

At her private school just beyond the city limits of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Mary “Tracy” Morrison demanded the attention of the 19 students seated on the floor in a circle. She then directed a skinny 13-year-old boy wearing a cartoon Mario shirt to sit in the center. “Raise your hand if he’s ever been mean to you — ever,” Morrison, the owner, prompted the other middle schoolers, and some hands shot up. “Most people don’t think you’re a nice kid. You lie. You lie all the time,” she told the boy. She encouraged his classmates to name things they don’t like about him. Morrison’s voice got louder. She knelt inside the circle just inches from the boy and swatted him. On the head. On the neck. At first he flinched and started to raise his hands to block her. But she snapped at him to keep his arms down: “You don’t have the right!”

How school choice may sustain income segregation in US classrooms

Bert Gambini, Phys.org

Schools in the U.S. are often segregated by income as well as race, a reality frequently attributed to residential segregation. Students assigned to K-12 schools based on where they live will, by extension, typically experience that same degree of segregation in their classrooms. School choice offers the promise of breaking that connection, but a new University at Buffalo study suggests that it is unlikely to do so. “What we see in this research is that the economic makeup of classrooms really affects parents’ preferences; specifically, parents tend to avoid classrooms populated by a large number of students from low-income families,” says Shelley Kimelberg, associate professor of sociology and criminology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and the paper’s corresponding author.

Civic Education Has Bipartisan Support, Generational Fault Line

Colyn Ritter, Real Clear Education

In a letter to British philosopher Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson penned the following: “Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.” As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s words hold extra weight when it comes to K-12 education — more specifically, civics education and teaching about landmark pieces of U.S. history like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. This year, EdChoice, in partnership with Morning Consult, surveyed a nationally representative sample of Americans and asked them a set of questions on the importance of civics education. The results were decisive. Sixty-four percent of Americans said it is “extremely” or “very” important for schools to teach civics and how government works in middle school, and 77% of Americans said the same about teaching these topics in high school.

Other News of Note

How do young people feel about AI? 7 teens weigh in [Audio]

Lee Gaines, All Things Considered

For 15-year-old Charles Ansevin, in Gates Mills, Ohio, ChatGPT is like a friend. “We’ve been able to have very meaningful, you know, intelligent discussions.” But Dorian Prado, 16, of Forth Worth, Texas, says he’s “very against AI.” Two large heads face each other: on the left, a network of nodes representing AI, and on the right, a human child. A teacher stands in the middle, looking at the AI on the left. “It makes it to where thinking is optional, and that should never be the case,” says Prado. “You don’t think, you don’t learn. It’s making us dumber.” The arrival of generative artificial intelligence has sparked fierce debates among adults about what it should and shouldn’t be used for. But what’s it like to grow up and learn in the age of AI? NPR put that question to seven teenagers across the country.